About Ashley F. Miller

If you enjoyed this, consider supporting my work at Patreon. Every little bit helps.

I have a PhD in Mass Communications, with a focus on intersectional theory, television, and social media. I speak across the US on topics related to feminism, atheism, and communications. I worked in the film and television industry for several years on shows like "Toddlers & Tiaras" and "Flipping Out." I've been published in the best-selling Women's Studies text "Women's Voices, Feminist Visions," alongside writers like Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, and Jessica Valenti. I also play the ukulele.

The break up alert phenomenon

One of the most difficult things about the rapid expansion of social media is the explosion of data that it provides without any real simple solutions to accessing histories or things you’d particularly like to access. This void in the world of Facebook and Twitter has all but invited others to come in and try to take advantage, to offer services that one would think Facebook or Twitter would be providing for you. Because of the sheer volume of updates and information, it is difficult to track down some information that you’d like to have and no social media network seems to be trying to make it easier.

Enter apps like “Break Up Alert”, an app that is approaching a million users despite being only a few days old. All the app does is inform you on changes in your friends’ relationship statuses, something that would normally be in your News Feed but might get lost in the crush of status updates. And it let’s you personalize it –is there a hot girl you know who’s been dating some loser, well you can add them to a list that will focus on people you’re particularly interested in. Sort of a stalker-light sort of program –it takes the work out of stalking.

Now, this is bringing up all the privacy concerns that many people have brought forward about Facebook, but it’s just making access to available information slightly more straightforward. This ability to monitor particular behavior from particular users in Facebook is really useful, though. Unlike keyword searching in Twitter or scrubbing your feeds, this allows you to find something your interested in and be always updated every time something changes

I think we’ll probably be seeing a lot of personalized update systems like this for social networks to allow people to find and be alerted to things they’re interested in. Say you’re interested in movies, there could be an app that consolidates any time someone in your friend group recommends or pans a movie they’ve seen. Or use it the other way, if there’s content you hate, you could block it from your News Feed. Hate constant updates about church on Sunday? Block them. There are so many useful ways to play with data and feeds that I can only hope that people who are better at programming than I am get in on it soon – I’ve got more ideas, call me!

About the author

If you enjoyed this, consider supporting my work at Patreon. Every little bit helps.

I have a PhD in Mass Communications, with a focus on intersectional theory, television, and social media. I speak across the US on topics related to feminism, atheism, and communications. I worked in the film and television industry for several years on shows like "Toddlers & Tiaras" and "Flipping Out." I've been published in the best-selling Women's Studies text "Women's Voices, Feminist Visions," alongside writers like Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, and Jessica Valenti. I also play the ukulele.